A known type of input/output (I/O) electrical connector includes an elongated dielectric housing having a front mating face and rear face with a terminal module-receiving cavity extending therebetween. The faces extend between opposite ends of the elongated housing. One or more terminal modules are mountable within the cavity. Each terminal module includes a dielectric insert surrounding a plurality of terminals, with the terminals of each module often being in a linear array. The dielectric inserts often are overmolded about the array of terminals.
Various means normally are employed to hold or lock the terminal modules within the housing cavity of such electrical connectors as described above. Most often, the dielectric inserts of the modules have latches that interengage with corresponding latch means on the connector housing to hold the modules within the housing cavity. These latches cause various problems, including increasing the overall size of the connector. The latch devices are asymmetrical which makes assembly tedious particularly when the assembly operations are carried out by hand. Latches also are often provided between adjacent terminal modules when mounted within the ho using cavity. Therefore, connectors using less than a full complement of terminal modules cannot be used. In other words, it may be desirable to provide a system flexible enough to permit the omission of some of the modules.
Electrical connectors of the character described above often include terminal tail aligning devices. Specifically, the tail aligning devices are mountable on the connector housings and have a plurality of apertures through which the tail portions of the terminals extend. A tail aligning device typically is provided as a flat plastic member having the tail-receiving apertures therethrough and function to maintain the tail portions of the terminals in proper position and spacing.
The present invention is directed to solving the above problems in electrical connectors which utilize terminal modules, by a unique system in which the tail aligning device serves a dual function of providing means to hold the terminal modules within the housing cavity without any extraneous latch means as described above. This reduces the overall size of the connector, allows for easy mounting of one or more terminal modules in the connector without interengaging latch means therebetween, and affords ready use of symmetrical terminal modules.